Articles

Painting Dark African Skin By Steve May

I have always wondered how to paint very dark African skin tones, which are typical of those people living in the tropic regions of the continent. When Perry miniatures released their plastic Sudanese figures I was very keen to experiment with some painting techniques to represent them.

The war in the Sudan, as was the 1882 war in Egypt, one that Britain was reluctant to become involved in. El Mahdi (messiah) emerged in southern Sudan with an ever expanding mass of faithful Ansar (followers) which by early 1883 covered the whole of Egyptian held Sudan, west of the Nile. Egyptian field forces were sent out, were generally annihilated, and one by one Egyptian towns fell to the Mahdists. The Egyptian government hired one William Hicks, a colonel in the Indian army, to take charge of the Egyptian army in the Sudan. Equipped with poor quality troops and a motley European/Egyptian command they marched to face the Mahdi. Buoyed up by one outstanding victory at Jebel Ain, Hicks requested British troops which were refused but with a larger Egyptian force set out to retake the rich province of Kordofan. After an exhausting two months cat and mouse chase the force, together with Hicks, were massacred at Kashgil.

At the start of the American War of Independence, Congress could only call on the standing militias of each Colony/State. The limitations of using militia to fight a prolonged campaign had been known to the Colonists since the late 1600s and, in spite of the blind determination of some politicians to rely on the “civic purity” of the militia, wiser heads eventually prevailed and the Continental Army was created in June 1775.

Old myths and new research often sit uneasily together, and the 30 years since the publication of the famous (and still very useful) Mollo/McGregor book Uniforms of the American Revolution have seen a considerable amount of new data unearthed – often quite literally – in Europe and North America. The following article attempts to bring together all the latest knowledge concerning the organisation and appearance of the British element of the ill-fated army that left Canada in June 1777. Two more articles will look at the German (Brunswick/Hesse Hanau) and North American (Loyalist, Canadian and Indian) contingents, respectively.

“German” (more specifically Brunswick and Hesse Hanau) units served under both Burgoyne and St Leger during the 1777 campaign. Men from both states made up the left wing of Burgoyne’s army, under Baron Riedesel (note just plain old plain old, no “von”) and a few Hesse-Hanau jaeger joined St Leger’s expedition. “Hessian” jaeger, grenadier, musketeer and artillery figures, can be used to represent both contingents.

It was the night before Christmas…well about 10 days before, when a maiden in distress popped up on The Miniatures Page forum. She was a researcher from a TV company making a programme about Baden-Powell's book Scouting for Boys which is to be shown as part of BBC4's forthcoming Edwardian Season ( this edition is to be shown on 14th May BBC 4 at 9 o’clock ). Specifically what she needed was an accurate and detailed model of the Siege of Mafeking during the Boer War to show how Baden-Powell’s small force and cunning weezes could hold at bay 7,700 Boers (odds of six to one) for 217 days and how the siege gave birth to the Scout movement. What she got in response from TMP forum was a lot of jokes about Scouts and a few sensible replies one of which suggested our names as we had made a Boer War range in the past and might be able to help.